We took a walk last weekend along a nature trail in a city park in Seattle. People jogged by, kayakers paddled by on Lake Washington. The day was gloriously sunny, with the temperature in the 50's. It 'almost' felt like spring. But, next morning, frost was covering the grass and shrubs. The birds were nowhere to be seen. Winter again, and the long slow wait for warmth and sunshine.I'm reading, again, "The Meadow" by James Galvin. It is one of the best books written about the American west.
In it, James Galvin writes about the hundred-year history of a meadow in the arid mountains of the Colorado-Wyoming border. He describes the seasons, the weather, the wildlife, and the people who struggle to build a life there. He writes:"It takes a lot of weather to make a winter bad, whereas a couple of weeks in summer, with the east wind dug in, cold vapor shifting in the meadow, the garden's fenceposts and the timbered ridges hard to make out except for dreamy glimpses, could generate as much gloom as being snowed in for a month.
A week of wind could make him edgy as a civet cat. A piddle of useless thunder- shower on cut hay could make him almost cynical. But when the sun shone and the air was mild, a cheerfulness that had no source in his circumstance or prognosis emanated from his soul. A January thaw made him transcendently cheerful, though tobacco smoke had opened its black cloak inside him and he knew it. He could be happy snowed in and dying alone, if only the sun kept shining."
